trouble shooting steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the...

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Trouble shooting Steps Mining Intel Motherboard – Go with MSI 100/200 Series Motherboard With the rise of bitcoin/ethereum mining, AMD graphics cards once again became one of the top-selling graphics card series in the market. However, it is relatively harder to acquire the economic mining motherboard due to the fact that Intel slowly discontinued the H81 and B85 chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new way out along with the release of the 100-series chipset, yet many of them found that when they attached 6 AMD graphics cards on the 100-series motherboard, even though the board successfully recognized 6 graphics cards, there were always exclamation marks on 3 or 4 graphics cards within device manager in the OS. And, of course, the cards with exclamation marks would not function properly during mining. MSI consistently heard such inquiries from customers. Hence, MSI does a series of tests for its products and picked a couple motherboards including Z170-A PRO, Z170A SLI PLUS, Z170 KRAIT GAMING, Z170A KRAIT GAMING, Z170A KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose of mining. There are few things that need to be done before mining and it will be explained in the paragraph below using MSI Z270-A PRO as example.

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Page 1: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

Trouble shooting Steps

Mining Intel Motherboard – Go with MSI

100/200 Series Motherboard

With the rise of bitcoin/ethereum mining, AMD graphics cards once again became one of the

top-selling graphics card series in the market. However, it is relatively harder to acquire the

economic mining motherboard due to the fact that Intel slowly discontinued the H81 and B85

chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new

way out along with the release of the 100-series chipset, yet many of them found that when they

attached 6 AMD graphics cards on the 100-series motherboard, even though the board

successfully recognized 6 graphics cards, there were always exclamation marks on 3 or 4

graphics cards within device manager in the OS. And, of course, the cards with exclamation

marks would not function properly during mining. MSI consistently heard such inquiries from

customers.

Hence, MSI does a series of tests for its products and picked a couple motherboards including

Z170-A PRO, Z170A SLI PLUS, Z170 KRAIT GAMING, Z170A KRAIT GAMING, Z170A

KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose of mining. There are

few things that need to be done before mining and it will be explained in the paragraph below

using MSI Z270-A PRO as example.

Page 2: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

Update BIOS MSI has patched solutions especially for PCIE device recognition on the boards which are

mentioned above. The “above 4G decoding” option is added to BIOS which allows the

motherboard to efficiently allocate resources for all 6 graphics cards.

Download BIOS, E7A71IMS.120 which supports bitcoin/ethereum mining -> Copy it to the root

folder of USB pen drive -> Connect USB pen drive to motherboard USB port -> Start the system

and enter BIOS -> Choose M-Flash -> Select Yes to continue BIOS flash.

System will reboot and enter M-Flash user interface. Please find the USB pen drive on the left

panel, select the USB pen drive and the BIOS file will show up on the right panel. Choose

E7A71IMS.120 and click yes to start the BIOS flash.

Page 3: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

During the flashing process, do not power off the system or unplug USB pen drive; this could

cause unrepairable damage to the BIOS and brick the motherboard.

Page 4: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

System Installation After BIOS flash, boot up the system with CPU integrated graphics without adding any discrete

graphics cards. Use Win10 professional 64 bits as your preferred OS and install all the relevant

motherboard drivers after the OS installation.

Graphics Card Driver Installation Under BIOS setup, set Settings\Advanced\Integrated Graphics Configuration\Initiate Graphic

Adapter to be IGD as below:

Page 5: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

After it is done, turn off the machine and connect one graphics card only. Please note: do not

insert the discrete graphics card right onto the PCIE slot on the motherboard. Instead, please use

mining adapter (ex. x1 to x16 PCIe adapter) as an intermediate between motherboard and the

external graphics card. Proceed to enter OS and install the latest driver for the graphics card.

After that, you should find both integrated and discrete graphics could be recognized in device

manager without any exclamation mark (under display adapters).

Page 6: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

Upon ensuring both integrated and discrete graphics cards are properly recognized, right-click on

the desktop icon and select “Power Options” to enter power options settings.

Page 7: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

Click “Choose what the power button does”.

Click “Change settings that are currently unavailable”.

Page 8: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

Unclick “Turn on fast startup (recommended)”.

Page 9: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

Reboot to enter BIOS setup, set Settings\Advanced\PCI Subsystem Settings\Above

4G memory/Crypto Currency Mining to “Enabled” as below,

Page 10: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

Save the BIOS settings and shut down the system. Add the remaining 5 graphics cards to the

motherboard one by one. It is recommended to do the following steps:

Add one graphics card to the motherboard

Boot into system to allow the motherboard to recognize the newly attached graphics card

Do these steps repetitively until user attaches all graphics cards

The reason behind it is that if user attaches all graphics cards at once, the system might have a

huge delay when trying to detect every graphics card on the motherboard. When the delay

occurs, the monitor would stay black screen and could possibly mislead users to believe that the

system cannot boot up.

Please refer to picture below for MSI Z270-A PRO which successfully picks up 6 graphics cards.

Page 11: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

Mining Test

Tool: genoil-zec-miner.zip

Download Link: https://github.com/Genoil/ZECMiner/tree/master/releases

Right-click on the start.bat to edit the file as below,

Execute start.bat in administrator mode

Note.

Wallet Address - The wallet address may be acquired from certain transaction platforms

Page 12: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

ZCASH (PRC): https://yunbi.com/

ZCASH (Global): https://poloniex.com/

Bter: http://bter.com/

Pool Address

Server location Server Host Stratum Port

Europe zec-eu1.nanopool.org 6666

Europe zec-eu2.nanopool.org 6666

US East zec-us-east1.nanopool.org 6666

US West zec-us-west1.nanopool.org 6666

Asia zec-asia1.nanopool.org 6666

Europe eu1-zcash.flypool.org 3333

US us1-zcash.flypool.org 3333

China cn1-zcash.flypool.org 3333

Asia asia1-zcash.flypool.org 3333

China zec.f2pool.com 3357

BIOS Version Guide

Motherboard BIOS Version for Mining Download Link

Z170-A PRO E7971IMS.1H1 http://pan.baidu.com/s/1kVBGvY3

Z170A SLI PLUS E7998IMS.1A2 http://pan.baidu.com/s/1pKL1F6b

Z170 KRAIT GAMING E7984IMS.BC1 http://pan.baidu.com/s/1c2dzbbE

Z170A KRAIT GAMING E7984IMS.AC1 http://pan.baidu.com/s/1jH6cOZ0

Z170A KRAIT GAMING 3X E7A11IMS.281 http://pan.baidu.com/s/1hsmesvi

Z270-A PRO E7A71IMS.120 https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/Z270-A-PRO.html#down-bios

H270-A PRO E7A71IMS.500 TBD

Miscellaneous

Screenshot of using Z270-A PRO to mine

Page 13: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

Full list of boards for 6GPU, 7GPU & 8GPU mining support.

Page 14: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

BLOG CATEGORIES

Laptop/Notebook

All-In-One

Desktop

Motherboard

Graphic Card

6 Cards 7 Cards 8 Cards

5xPCIe slot + 1x M.2 Adaptor 6xPCIe slot 6xPCIe slot + 1x M.2 Adaptor 6xPCIe slot + 2x M.2 Adaptor

Intel 200 series

Z270 GAMING M7 Z270 GAMING M7 Z270 GAMING M7

Z270 GAMING M6 AC Z270 GAMING M6 AC Z270 GAMING M6 AC

Z270 GAMING M5 Z270 GAMING M5 Z270 GAMING M5

Z270 GAMING PRO CARBON Z270 GAMING PRO CARBON Z270 GAMING PRO CARBON

Z270 GAMING PRO Z270 GAMING PRO Z270 GAMING PRO

Z270 KRAIT GAMING Z270 KRAIT GAMING Z270 KRAIT GAMING

Z270 GAMING PLUS Z270 GAMING PLUS Z270 SLI PLUS

Z270 SLI PLUS Z270 SLI PLUS

Z270 SLI Z270 SLI

Z270-A PRO Z270-A PRO

H270-A PRO H270-A PRO

AMD AM4 + Ryzen CPU

B350 GAMING PRO CARBON X370 GAMING PRO CARBON X370 GAMING PRO CARBON

B350 KRAIT GAMING X370 KRAIT GAMING X370 KRAIT GAMING

X370 GAMING PRO X370 GAMING PRO

X370 GAMING PLUS X370 GAMING PLUS

X370 SLI PLUS X370 SLI PLUS

AMD AM4 + BR APU/CPU

X370 GAMING PRO CARBON

X370 KRAIT GAMING

X370 GAMING PRO

X370 GAMING PLUS

X370 SLI PLUS

B350 GAMING PRO CARBON

B350 KRAIT GAMING

Page 15: Trouble shooting Steps · chipset, and this caused the shortage of mining motherboards in the market. Users found a new ... KRAIT GAMING 3X, Z270-A PRO, H270-A PRO which fit the purpose

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